Hand Hygiene Program Promotes Patient Involvement

       Partners in Your Care^SM is a patient, family, and healthcare worker program developed by Dr. Maryanne McGuckin at University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa, and designed to monitor hand hygiene compliance. Patients and families are asked to be Partners in Your Care by asking all healthcare workers that have direct contact with them or their family member, “Did you wash your hands?” or “Did you sanitize your hands?”
       The Partners in Your Care program provides the infection control practitioner (ICP) with an ongoing technique for hand hygiene, education, compliance with hand hygiene, and outcome monitoring through soap and hand sanitizer usage. Following a simple formula, an ICP will collect data on soap and hand sanitizer usage and forward it to the University of Pennsylvania to analyze. A confidential report showing hand washings per bed day, infection rates, and/or endemic organism trend will be sent monthly to monitor the program’s success.
       Visit http://www.med.upenn.edu/mcguckin/handwashing/ for more information.

ARJO Forms Alliance With BHM and Wy’EAST Medical

       ARJO’s (Roselle, Ill) parent company, Getinge Industries, recently acquired BHM-Medical Inc. of Canada. This alliance makes ARJO the exclusive distributor in the United States and Canada for Wy’EAST Medical (Clackamas, Ore).
       ARJO will now offer a complete line of patient handling products and services. This includes ceiling track lift systems, such as the innovative Maxi Sky series manufactured by BHM, and Wy’East Medical’s lateral transfer systems that include TotaLift II, TotaLift-PTS, and TC300.
       All products are supported by ARJO’s nationwide network of direct sales and service, technical support, and educational programs.
       For more information, visit http://www.arjo.com or call 800-323-1245. In Canada, call 800-665-4831.

Argentum Medical and Carolina Mills Start New Facility

       Argentum Medical LLC (Willowbrook, Ill) and Carolina Mills, Inc. (Maiden, NC) announce the start up of a new manufacturing facility, Carolina Silver Technologies (CST). This facility will produce silver-plated yarns and fabrics for fabrication into Argentum Medical’s current Silverlon® brand of wound and burn care dressings as well as other brands to be rolled out later this year.
       Carolina Mills, with more than 70 years in the textile business, brings extensive and highly regarded expertise in precision textile dying, finishing, and spinning. The combination of Carolina’s textile knowledge and process control expertise and CST’s plating experience, along with Argentum’s wound care knowledge and patented technology, is expected to yield high-quality plated fabric.
       Among several competing silver wound care platforms, Argentum and CST believe the textile option offers the greatest promise. Not only are plated textiles more flexible and programmable for performance, they are also the safest and the most durable of all silver products.
       For inquiries about medical products, contact Gregg Silver at gsilver@silverlon.com or 773-281-3252. For nonmedical applications, contact Bennett Fisher at bfisher@carolinasilvertechnologies.com or 828-879-1064.